surrounded us--a ring of men staring and offering bets. The lamp at
the street-corner shone on their faces; and close under the light of
it Master Stokes and I were hammering one another.

We were fighting by rule, too. Some one--I cannot say who--had taken
up the affair, and was imposing the right ceremonial upon us. It may
have been the cheerful, blue-jerseyed Irishman, to whose knee I
returned at the end of each round to be freshened up around the face
and neck with a dripping boat-sponge. He had an extraordinarily wide
mouth, and it kept speaking encouragement and good advice to me.
I feel sure he was a good fellow, but have never set eyes on him from
that hour to this.

Bully Stokes and I must have fought a good many rounds, for towards
the end we were both panting hard, and our hands hung on every blow.
But I remember yet more vividly the strangeness of it all, and the
uncanny sensation that the fight itself, the street-lamp, the crowd,
and the dim houses around were unreal as a dream: that, and the
unnatural hardness of my opponent's face, which seemed the one
unmalleable part of him.

A dreadful thought possessed me that if he could only contrive to hit
me with his face all would be over. My own was badly pounded; for we
fought--or, at any rate, I fought--without the smallest science; it
was blow for blow, plain give-and-take, from the start. But what
distressed me was the extreme tenderness of my knuckles; and what
chiefly irritated me was the behaviour of Doggy Bates, dancing about
and screaming, "Go it, Stimcoes! Stimcoes for ever!" Five times the
onlookers flung him out by the scruff of his neck; and five times he
worked himself back, and screamed it between their legs.